I do not have the latest Sonos kit that can do Airplay...in your case, this is therefore not an issue. With Airplay compatible Sonos kit, yes the native Apple Music app can be used.

But, a question: when using Airplay, is the phone still in the loop? If so, the disadvantage is that battery charge consumption on the phone will continue for music streaming, unlike in the case of true casting where the stream switches from the phone to the cloud when casting starts and the phone is out of the loop.

I don’t know - it’s an implementation detail I’m not conversant with.

I believe (but I’m not 100% sure) that if you Airplay video from an iOS device to an Apple TV, then it behaves as you suggest - the Apple TV takes over the stream - but that may or may not imply how Airplay audio streaming works.

But that is the point - you need to buy more Apple hardware to do this, in this instance, Apple TV.  Spotify, not being the business of selling hardware, makes no such imposition.

And if one is talking of using Airplay, why isn't the thread question moot anyway? If a airplay capable phone is playing Apple HD why can it not Airplay that music to Sonos even today, as long as Sonos in question is Airplay capable?

I am not familiar with airplay or airplay 2 hence this question:

If the phone is playing Apple Music HD - beyond even CD density - and the music is being streamed from the phone to any Airplay 2 capable Sonos speaker, will Sonos be able to play it? 

Yes, but it will be resampled to 16/44.1 for airplay by iOS at a system level.  At least thats how it currently works.  

Apple could instead just pass the 16/44.1 version of the track instead with some trickery… depends if they keep different versions of a track in the cloud or only have a single hires version and rely on the phone to downsample it to 16/44.1 if thats all thats selected...

So then if the phone is playing Apple HD, the same file will get downsampled and the benefit, if any, of any remastering will be available via Sonos as well I suppose, because by all accounts it  is this remastering that lies behind the perceived better sound quality. But all this, for people that are able to and happy to use Airplay.

The reason I invested in Sonos back in 2011, is because Airplay via AEX units was not as stable as I need music play to be, and I therefore did not even bother to check out Airplay 2 when that arrived. And my preference for native app use is met by Spotify, so there is nothing that makes Apple Music a must have for me.

Just for posterity in case anyone missed it as I see a few speculating…

Looks like apple are opening up Airplay 2 to be able to stream up to 24/192 as long as your end point has a DAC that can recieve that. 

In my case my Sonos Amp is my end point so the question is will Sonos now expand on its 24/48 limitation it has with Qobuz and let us hear hi res streaming from Apple Music? 

I know Sonos seems to be against hi res streaming but it's moving from a niche market into the mainstream now with Apple / Amazon and Spotify all going to be providing hi res streaming as standard. 

My understanding is AirPlay 2 can support upto 24/48 but at the moment is capped at 16/44. I don’t think Spotify are going to offer beyond cd quality. Again it will be interesting to see what implementation of native Spotify support sonos will give when it launches. Also we will have to see what way Spotify connect will work with Sonos and other devices. I think if Spotify stay at 16/44 than the connect feature should be ok. But will Sonos say it’s up to Spotify to implement the audio improvements natively they probably will. Finally my understanding is that to go beyond 24/48 with Apple Music will be a usb dac job only from a mac or iPhone/iPad. Etc (yes Android supports Apple Music but android resamples all signals being output over usb). I have no idea about Amazon music as have never used it due to it not being available here. Certainly interesting times ahead. 

I agree, except that I would not use the word “exactly” in the quote. Sonos can do a better job on this than what it does today without at the same time going the whole hog and letting customers be privy to all the details of their interactions with Apple, or to make a commitments to time frames for implementation until they are sure these can be met.

Saying - it is all up to Apple - sounds silly. IMO. Sonos defenders will disagree.

The question of how stable wireless streaming of data dense HD music files will be, especially in grouped mode, is something that not many users are anticipating though. In many cases stable music play will need grouped units to be ethernet wired to the network. So, be careful what you wish for. And, for something of unproven audible benefit.

Airplay 2 seems interesting though, assuming (since I don't have it) that it delivers stable music play today. The interesting thing is that on the phone side, one can obtain the HD streams, while for in home distribution these are down sampled to files as dense as CD format files, presenting a lesser challenge for wireless distribution. With the same sound being delivered because the downsampling will still allow all the benefits of remastered to a higher standard HD music to be heard.

That is completely wrong if you have read anything at all and it is not typical of Apple. Apple Music is on android and everywhere else they can think of to make money from services. 

They are not “opening up” Airplay 2. A new version of Airplay would be required to go beyond cd quality. Sonos has always denied the benefits of hi res so I very much doubt their hardware can play it. 

Interesting and it suggests that there is much more to Airplay than what meets the eye. 

All these gyrations could have been avoided if more Sonos speakers had line in jacks. Wire an iDevice and get the HD sound via the oldest, universal and widely accepted protocol - analog electrical signals - without anything having to be done by either company. Heard sound quality then is dependent just on speaker quality...

I’m lead to believe it will just be an software update of Airplay 2, not a new version altogether, like what apple done when moving streaming to 4k on Apple TV. The capability has always been there it’s just been capped.

 So will we now see Sonos support Hi-Res for Apple Music’s 70 million subscribers who from next month will have access to Hi-Res streaming?

I am sure that Sonos has a pretty good idea of how much of their user base is a subset of this 70 million number; while prioritising their actions and resource allocation, if there is one thing you can be sure of, it is that Sonos will be very mindful of its user base - existing as well as target - sliced and diced in every which way.

Do you have a source for this info? Would be good to know if that’s happening. It would seem possible as surely the bit rate required is still below Airplaying 4K video across your network, which Airplay 2 was upgraded to do last September. It doesn’t fit the smallprint of Apple Music Lossless though. The most logical time to announce this would be WWDC in June but Lossless doesn’t launch until then either and already says for anything higher than 24/48 you need an external DAC physically attached, which would contradict being able to do it via AirPlay.

Also, is Sonos’ 24/48 limitation physical or in software?

Can you airplay 4k video to multiple endpoints at the same time and have them play in sync?  My guess is that you can’t.  When streaming a video to a single source, you have the luxary of using a rather huge buffer to allow for changes in transmission speeds etc.  Even then, you can temporarily stop the stream when the buffer runs empty and restart without issue.  That is not the case with multiroom audio.  While the amount of data is much smaller, you can’t have as large of a buffer, and you have to have all the device coordinate to play in sync.  If one of the endpoints losing the connection, you can’t just pause everything to let it catch up, it has to stop playing and rejoin everything else, etc.

In short, you need to have a much more solid network to do multiroom audio in an acceptable way then you do to stream a video to a single source. 

Roon manage it quite well 

Roon sends video streams to multiple endputs in sync?  The point was that if you can stream 4k video, than you can stream hires audio.  My counterpoint was that it having to play the stream at multiple endpoints in sync was a big factor.

My point is that Roon manages to send large audio files in sync to multiple end points with no issues. 

Ok, great.  Doesn’t change my point though in comparison to video streaming vs audio streaming in a multiroom settings.

I don’t know much about the Roon, but I would guess that they use a much larger buffer than Sonos does.  And they can get away with that since they don’t stream any ‘live’ sources from an aux input or TV.  That would make the job a lot easier, I would think.

This is news to me and interesting, and it prompted me to open this thread:

https://en.community.sonos.com/advanced-setups-229000/stable-wireless-streaming-distribution-of-hd-music-6858832

Quite possible; but don’t confuse clearer as distinct from louder. Louder always sounds clearer, plus it has all the sound quality traits so beloved of audiophiles. And louder was therefore a trick taught to stereo salesmen in the days of brick and mortar stores.

The same effect can be had by bumping the volume control a tad to the right.

I just ordered a (discontinued) Apple AirPort Express from eBay for $30. I plan to connect the analog out from the AirPort Express to the analog in on my Sonos Port. That should allow me to stream lossless Apple Music to every Sonos endpoint.

I still have my old iPhone 7, which I plan to wipe and use to stream Apple Music to the AirPort Express. I don’t think the DAC in the AirPort Express is the greatest and the resolution will be limited to CD quality, but that’s my solution for now. I’m not convinced it will sound any better than AAC played through the Sonos app, but it’s worth $30 to find out.

I also have a Meridian Explorer² DAC/headphone amp that handles signals up to 24/192. I can connect it directly to my phone using the USB camera kit. That setup could also be connected to the Port, but I will probably only use it for headphone listening.

I do have an Apple TV 4K connected to a Sonos Arc + Sub + Play:1 surround pair. I hope that there are some good Dolby Atmos titles to try out.